Anne Lamott and Josh Waitzkin — The Tim Ferriss Show

This super-combo episode, marking the Tim Ferriss Show's 10th anniversary and 1 billion downloads, features two of Tim's favorite past guests. Anne Lamott discusses her writing philosophy from Bird by Bird, taming the inner critic, her childhood as a people-pleaser, and the dark nights of the soul that led her into radical self-care and 35 years of sobriety. Josh Waitzkin recounts a near-fatal shallow-water blackout from Wim Hof breathing, then unpacks how he cultivates flow, somatic awareness, and presence while training elite investors and parenting his son Jack. The pair's segments explore turning down self-criticism, learning from others' experiences as intensely as your own, and embodying quality as a way of life.

• Anne Lamott describes holding a sharpened pencil to her addicted son Sam's throat at her bottom, then driving him back to the Tenderloin; he got clean three weeks later and has been sober about 10 years.
  00:33:24
• Lamott's recent dark night of the soul came when she drove into the woods screaming with rage at her family; three months of radical self-care later, to the day, she met the man who became her husband.
  00:30:16
• Lamott had a three-day blackout over July 4th weekend 1986 and woke up in terror on July 7th, the turning point that began her 35 years of sobriety.
  00:25:39
• Josh Waitzkin blacked out at the bottom of an NYU pool for 3 minutes from shallow-water blackout after Wim Hof breathing, was unconscious 25 minutes, and doctors said his lifetime of training saved his life.
  00:43:16
• Waitzkin reveals his core chess style was to create chaos and find flow in it, learned playing hustlers in Washington Square Park, and that flow became his therapy under intense childhood competitive pressure.
  00:46:20
• Waitzkin explains his 'firewalking' process: cultivating the ability to learn from other people's experiences with the same physiological intensity as your own.
  01:33:47
• Waitzkin recounts breaking his hand 7 weeks before a national championship, training one-handed and intensely visualizing resistance training transferring to the casted arm; he didn't atrophy and won.
  01:38:25

• Anne Lamott's classic Bird by Bird is named after advice her father gave her brother on an overdue bird report: 'just take it bird by bird, buddy.'
  00:06:21
• Lamott cites E.L. Doctorow's line that writing is like driving at night with the headlights on, seeing only a little way ahead but making the whole journey.
  00:09:00
• Lamott's husband Neil Allen wrote 'Shapes of Truth' and works with clients to tame the inner critic by giving it a new job as ethical consultant.
  00:10:00
• Lamott calls laughter 'carbonated holiness' and Grace 'spiritual WD-40.'
  00:23:01
• Lamott married Neil three days after she got Medicare, at age 65.
  00:31:51
• Waitzkin notes the key Wim Hof safety error: it's carbon dioxide buildup, not oxygen deprivation, that triggers the urge to breathe, which is why blackouts in water are deadly.
  00:42:44
• Waitzkin describes how Marcelo Garcia, a nine-time world champion called 'king of the scramble,' enforces quality in small details like fixing a sloppy gi or running the full warmup circle.
  01:29:10
• Waitzkin discusses 'Pavlovian' conditioning of young investors who grew up in a post-2008 bull market and have only learned to feel pleasure from pressing the gas.
  01:36:21
• Carol Dweck's distinction between fixed (entity theory) and growth (incremental/mastery) mindset; praise the process not the outcome.
  01:35:50
• Waitzkin journals daily in Evernote, tagging everything thematically, and poses the most important question to his unconscious before sleep to brainstorm on it at waking, echoing Hemingway stopping mid-sentence.
  01:54:28